Do Ouija Boards Really Work?

The Ouija board has been used to make contact with the spirits of the dead for more than two millennium. The origin of the Ouija board date back to ancient times-Pythagoras in Greece in the sixth century B.C. and the Byzantine historian Ammianus Marcellinus in the fourth century. Also, in ancient Chinese civilizations, early variations on the modern Ouija board were described.

There are several cases of highly positive relationships that have been built up between a living and a deceased soul via the Ouija Board. The most intriguing of these are the literary spirits. In 1912, an American woman named Pearl Curran communicated with the spirit of Patience Worth, who said she had been born in Dorset, England, in 1642. Over seven years, Patience dictated five novels and countless poems to Pearl through the Ouija board. The New York Times described one of her novels as having been "constructed with the precision and accuracy of a master hand." One of her poems won first prize in an all-American poetry competition.

Leading psychics explain that the Ouija board has addictive properties for some, especially more weak-minded users. In these cases the user is left vulnerable to repeated contact with what can be described as malevolent spirits. These spirits are enabled to make contact with the user at any time, with or without the board. The person will be fed ideas in the form of an inner "voice." Paul Beard, president of the College of Psychic Studies in the UK, described this phenomenon in his book, A Field of Inquiry: The College of Psychic Studies, warning that overuse of the Ouija board risks exposure to "practically continuous evil suggestions".

There are also many cases of respectable people using the Ouija board and getting messages that are full of foul obscenities and violent threats of a kind that no party using the Ouija board would ever use. Mediums everywhere have long experience of spirits of the recently dead who are resentful of the living.